True Progress

…Continued

Environmental issues such as conservation and biodiversity are often seen as peripheral to our lives or the problems we face, but nothing could be further than the truth. This world is habitable because of the weathering of rocks and the death and recycling of organisms, because of the filtration, oxygenation, and water capturing functions that plants carry out, because of consumers’ roles in suppressing the populations of plants and other animals and producers’ conversion of solar energy to chemical energy. All of that happens within the Earth’s ecosphere and the ecosystems that comprise it, and all of it is self-sustaining and self-maintaining. Or, at least, it is until we start interfering with it. Read the rest of this entry »

You and your team doubtless have a long list of priorities, many stemming from the current economic recession; despite this, I hope you find the time to address a few issues, issues which, in the long run, will determine whether we have the time and luxury to address the remainder. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a lot of talk recently about whether economic markets have imploded due to over-regulation or under-regulation. Although most pick up that argument with their own particular political biases, it is a difficult question to answer not least because many governments actually act in both directions at the same time. But, let us look at a related but different aspect of civilization: innovation and progress.

In the same way that economics experiences cycles, booms, and busts, innovation and progress when considered as a market of ideas also experiences those things. This earlier article on regulation explains some of this, but we are going to take this idea a few steps further. Read the rest of this entry »

When Subsidies are Hard to See

When we think of our governments subsidizing a particular industry we usually envision a nice big check sent to them every year to the tune of millions of dollars from tax revenues. Sometimes, instead, it is that industry that is free from a particular tax that most others have to pay. But, what if instead there are payments in kind that elevate one industry or one form of technology over another. Would we recognize those things as government subsidies? Read the rest of this entry »

What would more effectively reduce pollution from small vehicles?

Recently, there was a significant political argument in the United States about the costs and benefits of increasing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Increased efficiency, the argument went, would reduce the consumption of fuel, and therefore help restrain fuel prices, also reducing pollution from vehicles causing reductions in greenhouse gasses and even more important things in the immediate term including smog producing substances, which are a major concern in large cities with warm climates like Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Atlanta. The counter argument said that the costs would be too high, adding to the prices of vehicles, reducing auto industry revenue, eliminating jobs, and reducing passenger safety. Read the rest of this entry »

Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, provides a powerful argument that development and progress cannot be measured on the basis of economic output and consumption alone, that personal freedom is a very important and in some areas predominate variable in determining whether progress has been or will be made, and in defining what poverty truly is.

Amartya Sen chooses to describe poverty not as a lack of resources, but as a lack of freedoms. Those freedoms include choosing where to live and work, with whom to associate, freedom to choose our leaders and decide the rules we live by, and many others. This key point is useful in that it does not focus solely on maximization of wealth as a way out of poverty. The problem with poverty is not lack of money, but that lack of money means that people are not free to make their own way in life. They may be trapped being at the mercy of nature, an opressive government, or an economy cripled by bad policy. The conclusion therefore, is that money alone cannot fix the real problem. Government reform, economic liberalization, and the general increase of personal freedoms is the true end we are striving for. Increasing incomes is one of several necessary steps to be accomplished and not an end in and of itself. Read the rest of this entry »